If you’re new to online marketing, you might have read quite a few anecdotes of how Google has ruined search with their latest update, Hummingbird. Black and white hat marketing forums were littered with stories of how their keyword packed pages that were once reigning the top of Google search are now in the dark abyss (read: second page of search results).

This was because Googlers got smarter. On an average, people were typing more words into their Google search results. People are no longer writing vague, short-tail keyword terms to find their desired information. They’re now writing keyphrases. Keyphrases have been what replaced keywords.

For example, if I were selling low-priced blankets (I’m writing in bed right now) I would want any customer who searched “Where to buy the cheapest blanket?” to see me immediately. This is what would be known as long-tail keywords in t…

If you aren’t an SEO vendor, you may have found yourself saying just that at one time or another.
Businesses have slowly but surely begun to realize the value of search engine optimization, and consequently, the demand for SEO services has increased. However, it’s important to understand what you hope to gain from an SEO program before you embark on one.

After all, SEO can involve a lot of different things: technical audits, on-page content recommendations, conversion optimization recommendations, blog posts, link building programs, etc. It could also be priced in any number of ways dependent on how many of tho…

Google says the Thanksgiving ranking shuffle is related to the Penguin 3.0 release from six weeks ago.

Google has confirmed with us that the shifts and changes reported throughout the industry on Thanksgiving day were a result of the Penguin 3.0 refresh that first began rolling out 6-weeks ago.
Google told us in response to what we saw on Thanksgiving day, “the Penguin rollout is ongoing, and this is just the effect of that.”

The interesting part was that Google began the rollout of Penguin 3.0 on October 17, 2014, which was 45 days ago, or over six-weeks ago. For this to still be rolling out is unusual, I would think. In addition, many sites that reported changes on that Thanksgiving, only saw recoveries. Meaning, it looked like somewhat of a reversal of the Penguin 3.0 rollout that happened in October. But the results from what happened over Thanksgiving is still unclear.

The Penguin 3.0 rollout initially impacted about 1% of queries, with this Thanksgiving occurrence, I am not sure…